Friday, October 19, 2012

What Next, and Why, and How...


I know, I know.  I don’t blog for forever, and now twice in one day.  But I have things on my mind.  Feel free to keep reading after this entry.

 

But first, right off, I have a friend whose husband just lost his job.  And her car is broken.  And she’s good people.  So if’n you’re reading this, and like the kind of stuff I write, go check her out:

 


 

She’s got a few free books, if you’re a sampling type, and her cheapest nvoels will cost you all of a dollar. 

 

Do my friend and yourself a favor and check out her stuff.

 

Onward.

 

I’ve been puzzling over something, and I’m putting it down here partially to get it out of my head, and partially to get thoughts from the people who drop by to visit.

 

At the moment, I’m currently in editing mode, which makes me tired.  I do reread books from time to time, but I’ve never been the guy who finishes a book and then immediately reads it again.

 

(A lot of this has to do with the STACKS of books in my to-be-read pile.  Not to mention the two-dozen Kindle books I’ve picked up and haven’t gotten around to.  I mean, seriously, one of my favorite authors wrote an ebook, and I’ve only read half of it:

 


(I will say I really liked that half…)

 

(I digress.)

 

So rereading, this thing I rarely do, is what I’ve been doing with my Blood Calling series.  I’m reading and editing them, then sending them off to Red Iris, then a week or two later I have them in my hands again and the only thing preventing them from coming out is me reading them a SECOND time.  Or actually, more like for the fifth or sixth time.

 

I’m not complaining (okay, a little bit…) but it has kept me from finishing some other projects. 

 

And there’s this other thing, which I’m going to talk about a little bit, but not too much, because it involves people who aren’t me.

 

Readers paying close attention might have noticed that the third book in the Blood Calling trilogy is dedicated to my friend Liz.  That’s not a random thing.  About a year ago, I found out Liz has cancer. 

 

I cannot stress to you how important Liz is to me and my family (not to mention her own).  More to the point she loves the Blood Calling books, and she even mentioned them on her “I’m fighting cancer” blog.

 

She was the woman who told me they were just as good as The Hunger Games.  And trust me, Liz will tell you when a book is bad.

 

Ever since I finished the trilogy, and started working on other things, she’s subtly and not-so-subtly mentioned that I should continue the story.

 

Now, I should say that it’s not like she’s trying to guilt me into it.  If anything, it’s a nice reminder that she likes my writing and wants to see more of it.

 

I still need to finish Frank, the Lonely Unicorn, but I’m hoping to wrap that up after all these edits (I may even take a crack and trying to push through it during National Novel Writing Month), at which point I plan to turn my attention back to the world of vampires.

 

Which brings me to my question.

 

Right now, one of the “big” things in e-publishing is the serial.  Much like a TV show, but slower, I guess, a new “episode” of the story comes out every month.  And then, after the story is done, the whole thing is stuck into one large book.

 

My friend Sara, linked up at the top, is doing this with her massively popular Seasons of the Moon series.  And John Scalzi, at man with two Hugos, is tapping into his Old Man’s War universe and doing this as well.

 

So now I’m puzzling: If I go back to the universe of vampires, how should I do it?  Do I spend six months trying to write the next chapter in the story?  Do I block out the better part of a year and do another trilogy?

 

Or do I sneak it out in sections, as is slowly becoming popular?

 

I dunno.

 

I can see certain advantages to both. 

 

I suppose my question is, what do YOU, as a reader, think you’d prefer?  A 60 page chunk of story at the start of every month?  Or a longer, more-fleshed-out tale every six months?

 

Operators are standing by…

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